Baring all in a podcast with US golf missionaries, No Laying Up, former CBS Sports reporter, Peter Kostis has turned the heat up on everyone’s favourite golfer, Patrick Reed, revealing Captain America’s recent rules controversy wasn’t the first time he’s seen Reed improve his lie.
Reed was the target of an angry mob baying for blood when appearing to, not quite scoop, but brush the sand -twice- from behind his ball in a waste area at the Hero World Challenge in December.
Every man, woman and child who watched Reed that day and has seen the incident since has cast a guilty verdict his way but the former Masters champion pleaded his innocence, insisted he felt no contact with the sand, accepted a two-shot penalty at the time and forever enhanced his reputation as golf’s greatest villain.
But now things might get a whole lot worse for golf’s dumbest criminal. According to Kostis, Reed has course form; course form that the on-course reporter witnessed first-hand at The Barclays in 2016 at Bethpage Black.
“I’ve seen Patrick Reed improve his lie, up close and personal four times now,” Kostis said on the podcast.
“That’s the only time I ever shut [Gary] McCord up [his co-commentator]. He didn’t know what to say when I said, ‘Well, the lie that I saw originally wouldn’t have allowed for this shot.’ Cause he put four or five clubs behind the ball, kinda faking whether or not he was going to hit this shot or that shot. By the time he was done, he hit a freaking 3-wood out of there. It was a sand wedge lay-up originally.”
And this was no isolated incident.
“I was in the tower on 16 at [the Farmers in] San Diego, and [Reed] hit it over the green and did the same thing,” Kostis added.
“He put three or four clubs behind it, and it was really a treacherous shot and nobody had gotten it close all day long from over there. By the time he was done, I could read ‘Callaway’ on the golf ball from my tower.”
Insurmountable evidence?
“I’m not going to assign intent, all I’m going to tell you is what I saw,” said Kostis. Say no more.
The idea of Reed repeatedly dipping his club into murky waters not only ignited the wrath of the watching public after the Hero World Challenge but it also incensed some of his fellow pros.
“If you make a mistake maybe once, you could maybe understand but to give a bit of a bulls— response like the camera angle … that’s pretty up there,” said Australian Cameron Smith.
“I don’t have any sympathy for anyone that cheats.”
Just this week, Brooks Koepka added fuel to the fire, ensuring there’ll be no love lost come Ryder Cup time in Whistling Straits should they both line out for Steve Stricker’s Team America.
“I don’t know what he was doing, building sandcastles in the sand, but you know where your club is,” Koepka said to SiriusXM.
“I mean, I took three months off and I can promise you I know if I touched sand. It’s one of those things where you know, if you look at the video, obviously he grazes the sand twice and then he still chops down on it.”
Whatever was left of Reed’s reputation, that ill-advised chop surely smashed it into smithereens. As for the integrity of the PGA Tour – who happily went to the brush too – sweeping Reed’s antics under the carpet and instead warning Smith over such outbursts in future, their reputation is another coming increasingly under threat.
You can listen to Kostis’ fascinating interview on No Laying Up HERE
Below is a video of Reed’s incident at The Barclays as called by Kostis:
Leave a comment